Uniondale, NY - February 7, 2017 - PSEG Long Island is ready for the heavy snow forecasted to hit the service territory on Thursday. All of the utility’s employees and contractors are prepared to respond to and restore any outages caused by the storm as quickly and safely as possible. 

“PSEG Long Island works throughout the year to prepare for extreme weather and to make sure the energy grid is reliable,” said John O’Connell, vice president of Transmission & Distribution at PSEG Long Island. “We are continually trimming trees away from power lines, enhancing technology to detect outages and working on FEMA reliability projects across the service territory—all in order to provide greater reliability and to help prevent outages during storms.”

While snow usually isn’t an issue for utilities, the combination of wet snow and windy conditions can increase the likelihood of downed wires and power outages.

PSEG Long Island has upgraded several of its systems to make it easier for customers to report outages and receive updates: 

• A new mobile-friendly outage map includes the number of customers served in the service territory and a selected area, the number affected by an outage, as well as the estimated restoration time and the cause of the outage, if available—at outagemap.psegliny.com. 
• MyAlerts, PSEG Long Island’s text message service, can be used to report and receive status updates on an outage.

o   Since this requires an account number for a one-time registration, it’s best to do it beforehand. To register, text REG to PSEGLI (773454) or visit the My Account section of the website. Once registered, to report an outage, simply text OUT to PSEGLI (773454).

Be prepared and stay safe during extreme weather:

• Save PSEG Long Island’s 24-hour Electric Service number: 1-800-490-0075
• Follow PSEG Long Island on Facebook and Twitter for updates before, during and after the storm. Remember, though, outages CANNOT be reported through social media
• Downed wires should always be considered “live”. Do not approach or drive over a downed line and do not touch anything it might be in contact with. If a wire falls on or near your car, stay inside the car, call 911, and do not get out until PSEG Long Island deenergizes the line. If you MUST get out of the vehicle because it is on fire, jump as far as possible away from the vehicle, with both feet landing on the ground at the same time, and hop or shuffle away.
• Make sure everyone in the family is prepared and knows what to do if there is an emergency. Visit here to learn about safety tips from Sesame Street, YouTube safety videos and more.

PSEG Long Island operates the Long Island Power Authority’s transmission and distribution system under a 12-year contract.  PSEG Long Island is a subsidiary of Public Service Enterprise Group Incorporated (NYSE:PEG), a publicly traded diversified energy company with annual revenues of approximately $10.4 billion.